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IRAQI VOICES

Like many others, I was intrigued by the attention the film “American Sniper” was getting. I knew I was treading murky waters, but I decided to follow the herd and see the movie. Unlike most people in the crowd, I had a very personal stake in the film. “American Sniper” takes place in Iraq, my homeland, which I left shortly after the American-led invasion that Chris Kyle took part in. So the film, powerful and sad, left me with mixed thoughts and reminiscences.

Falluja — where much of the movie takes place — was, for American troops, a city of demons and horror. But before the 2003 invasion, during the years of the embargo against Iraq, Falluja was known as little more than a transit hub frequented by travelers heading to the western border with Jordan – as well as for its tasty kebab. Three days before the invasion, a group of five teenagers from Baghdad, my son among them, drove there after midnight for a late meal. It was the norm. Nobody was hurt.

When I was back in Baghdad in 2010, I found that my skills on the very roads where I had learned to drive were no longer viable because of traffic jams caused by checkpoints and blast walls. I had to be transported around by a cast of fearful drivers. One driver, Sa’ad, told me quietly one day, “I cannot serve you tomorrow.” When I asked why, he replied that he had to go to Hilla — about 70 miles south of Baghdad — to bring the children of his dead brother to their grandmother’s home. His eyes were teary.

In 2006, his brother, he and a cousin were in a car that broke down near an American base. While the three were leaning under the car’s hood, trying to fix the engine, someone – perhaps an American sniper – shot and killed the brother and cousin. Shielded from the sniper’s sight by the car, Sa’ad was spared.

“His head was on the radiator, and I was too scared to do anything,” Sa’ad said, sobbing. After the killing of her husband, Sa’ad’s sister-in-law moved with her children to her parents’ house in Hilla.

Then I remembered attending a doctor’s funeral in Amman in 2006. He had been shot in the head, apparently by an American soldier, while driving home from his clinic in Baghdad. The air conditioning was on in his car at the time, so he did not hear orders to stop. The doctor was 62. “We are very sorry,” his wife said the Americans told her son afterward. “Sorry will not bring him back,” she said, crying.

Sa’ad must have noticed my distraught face as he told me about his brother. “Sniper attacks, as much as they feel personal and painful, are a trivial fraction of the war,” he said. “What if I tell you about the victims of random killings, mortar attacks, raids, crossfires and explosions.” Since Sa’ad is the paternal uncle, he is obligated to support his late brother’s family.

“We leave it to God, the greatest avenger,” he said.

In the movie, I could not understand the connection between Iraq and 9/11 for people like Chris Kyle. Like many people in Iraq, I had not heard of Al Qaeda until the United States was attacked that day, even though I was working as a press officer at a European embassy.

On July 19, 2003, my daughter, son and I left Baghdad. Baghdad International Airport was under the control of the United States military, and it was allowing it to be used only for military purposes. So Iraqis had to make the 10-hour drive to Amman. At the border, an American soldier stood guard. He was barely 18, pimples filling his ruddy baby face.

“I just want to speak with someone,” he said, popping his head into our passenger-side window. “I have not spoken with anyone for a week now.”

I felt sorry for him, a stranger in this desert. I wondered out loud what had brought him here. He said he was trying to pay for college.

About 4,500 American soldiers and 500,000 Iraqis lost their lives to this war, not to mention those who were left with long-term disabilities. The Iraqi diaspora caused by the American-led invasion is among the largest in modern history. The first question Iraqis who were in Iraq in 2003 ask one another when connecting on social media is: “Which country are you in?” No family has been left untouched.

You might think that, after all these years and after all the tears and changes of jobs, cities, countries and even nationalities, I would have become desensitized to the war. But the movie made me realize that I am not. Evidently, the scars of those days will remain with me forever.

Yasmine Mousa is an Iraqi-Canadian journalist who left Iraq in 2003. She is also a certified translator and interpreter.

BAGHDAD — September 11. Although it was 10 years ago it was just like yesterday. I was 21 years old when I went home from college, and when I first went into the house my eyes fell on the TV with a live broadcast of the second airplane hitting the tower.

I stood there with my family, shocked, watching the collapse of the building as people were throwing themselves from the windows. That really moved me a lot. I didn’t understand at first why it was happening and who was behind it. At that time we Iraqis were not allowed to have satellite TV channels. We used to have only two channels belonging to the government, and this was our only source of news.

The television was taking the pictures from CNN with no comments or sound, then the announcer said that the Americans were accusing Al Qaeda. It was the first time I heard this name. I had never heard about such a thing before, or where they were from, until later when the TV began showing reports that Al Qaeda had claimed responsibility for the attacks. I came to understand that they were a group of radical Islamists. Read more…

Sergey Ponomarev/Associated PressAug. 27: Libyans burned a poster that was attached to an apartment building in Tripoli of Colonel Qaddafi announcing the revolution in 1969.

At War asked four journalists from Iraq and Afghanistan to share their observations about the revolt in Libya.

Ali Hamdani is an Iraqi doctor who used to work as a journalist with The New York Times, The Times of London and NPR in Baghdad. He covered the trial of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad. He now lives in the United States.

Watching Tripoli falling from the comfort of my living room in the United States felt very different from witnessing the fall of my own city, Baghdad, with dead bodies and the wreckage of Iraqi army tanks all around.

At that time it was very hard to understand how everyone except Iraqis genuinely believed that Iraq was heading toward a prosperous spring season, similar to the one being made readily available for the dreams of the Libyan people these days.

It is very difficult to stand and deliver a sound judgment of what is wrong and what is right when you watch the history of a nation being made on a 47-inch HD flat screen in a nice living room.

Yes, I do believe that history repeats itself, however, this time I hope it will not.

Getting rid of a dictator does not always mean the end of a tragedy. It does not guarantee a better replacement, either.

I personally believe that the worst impact of dictatorial regimes on their nations only begins after their removal, so I will not be surprised to hear Libyans soon praising the days of Qaddafi and his awful regime. Just like Iraqis who at some point desperately called for Saddam Hussein to be back in power, despite the fact that he had already been executed at that time.

It is obvious that Qaddafi’s days are numbered, if not over, just like Mubarak in Egypt, and Ben Ali in Tunisia. But is it always about one person or one name? It is more about a gambling game, a game in which not all the players are gone by simply getting rid of one dictator or another.

Libyans are passing through a critical period in the history of their nation, for which the only remedy is to seek a suitable replacement able to contain the damage and to cure the wounds caused by four decades of oppression and corruption.

In simple words, Libyans must spare no effort in order to be able to make their own future, but is that realistically possible?

Seeing the price for regular gas in a gas station just around the corner from my new house in the United States a few days ago simply answers my question. The price is now almost $1 higher per gallon than when I first arrived here last year.

The events in Libya had an impact on fuel prices here in the United States, and of course other countries in the world. People from these countries are not happy with such prices; neither are the presidents who want to be re-elected.

I pray for the Libyan people to be safe, but, sadly, I believe that they are unlikely to break the rule by preventing history from repeating itself. NATO’s missiles of freedom on Qaddafi’s residence at Bab Al-Aziziya will soon generate a huge bill for the Libyans to pay.

The season of spring will only come when judgments and decisions are being made by the people who are suffering on the ground and not from the comfort of the Situation Room in the White House.

Pictures in such rooms are gathered from behind a flat screen that may even deliver the color of blood in 3D these days. But it will always fail to tell you how badly it smells.

Gaia Anderson/Associated PressAug. 28: As the rebels moved toward Surt, families began to flee.

Mohamed Husain is a former Iraqi head of the newsroom in The New York Times’s Baghdad bureau.

As the Libyan people get close to achieving their main goal, to get control of the whole country, there are reports of shortages of food and water beside other basic needs and services such as electricity and gasoline. This leaves the country that been dominated by Colonel Qaddafi for more than 40 years in a shaken state in the hands of the young and inexperienced rebels.

I watched the television news and saw Libyans gathering around water tankers in Tripoli to fill their jerry cans, and another scene where a rebel checkpoint searched a car, its trunk filled with empty plastic water bottles and containers.

That scene brought to my mind the days of 2003 during the Iraq war, when I was driving my car seeking water for my family. At that time the capital, Baghdad, suffered for weeks from lack of gasoline, food and the absence of electricity and telephone services.

Aside from shortages of food, water, gasoline, medicine, electricity and other basic needs, we cannot compare the fall of Baghdad to the fall of Tripoli, where things seems relatively more calm and tranquil in Libya.

If the Libyan Transitional National Council receives the help it needs and puts in place a consistent plan to recover the capitol, then we will not see another fall similar to that of Baghdad.

During the Iraq war the regime of Mr. Saddam Hussein was toppled by an outside invasion, because the attempts from the Iraqi people did not succeed at all. This is unlike what has happened in Libya, where Libyans took the initiative and rebelled against the regime, avoiding the need for NATO and U.S military ground forces on Libyan soil.

I also see reports that a number of Colonel Qaddafi’s military barracks have been looted, just like during the Iraq war in 2003, when all the Iraqi Army camps were looted by civilians, and there were public markets for arms at cheap prices.

The circulation of those weapons became a nightmare for Iraqis, since many were used by militias and insurgents in bloody terrorist attacks, and later during the furious sectarian war from 2006-2007.

As for national security in Libya, we know that Colonel Qaddafi crushed the Islamic movements in Libya, just as Saddam Hussein’s regime did in Iraq, but that does not necessarily mean that there are no extremist Islamic movements or trends in Libya waiting for the appropriate time to surface. In Iraq during 2003, many extremist groups managed to move to Iraq, making Iraq the main front for their morbid ideology; Al Qaeda set up its Iraqi version, Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, which is still considered the most bloody terrorist movement in the country right now.

Hopefully the course of the Arab Spring will pass smoothly and without a tragic end, like the one after the fall of Baghdad in 2003, from which Iraq still needs much time to recover.

Duraid Adnan is an Iraqi journalist who works for The New York Times in Baghdad.

BAGHDAD — Watching the Libyans taking down one of Qaddafi’s statues reminded me of the fall of Saddam’s big statue in the center of Baghdad. The first thing I thought was, “They have no idea what is going to happen to them.”

We were watching every minute, especially the last days, when they got to the capital. We were thinking, “What is Qaddafi going to do, will he hide just like Saddam or will he commit a suicide?”

Even when we were not at work, instead of watching a movie or something, we kept it on the news. One of my colleagues said that he stayed awake watching the news until 3:30 a.m. When he came in the next day, he asked if it had happened or not. “Did they kill him yet?”

Libya brings strange feelings for Iraqis, and makes them want to see what will happen there. Maybe because we were not the ones that took Saddam down, so we see ourselves in the Libyans. The goal is the same, to take down the Mafia man, but there the tools were different.

Both Arab capitals suffered from a dictatorship that would never accept a different point of view. In Iraq, there was no Iraqi before 2003 who was capable of carrying a weapon against Saddam. It was in our minds that Saddam would know what someone in Basra was thinking. Saddam controlled Iraqis from the inside.

However, one thing seems to be on the right path in Libya: I heard one of the rebel leaders say that they would not break up the army; instead, he said, “We will clean it of the bad guys, not like what happened in Iraq.” That is a good thing, for everyone saw the bad results of the decision by L. Paul Bremer III, the American proconsul in Baghdad, to dismantle the Iraqi army.

I tell the Libyans, look at Iraq and its current situation. What did we get from it? Destruction and suffering. So one question can be asked for them: Is democracy worth it?

Iraq is different from Libya. We have different sects and nationalities here, we have Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds, Arabs, Turkmen and Christians. I cannot even count how many different sects we have. It is complicated. In Libya they are mostly Sunnis. But there are people with and against Qaddafi.

Both countries have large quantities of oil and here the question comes. Was it for that reason that America supported the rebels in Libya?

Sharifullah Sahak is an Afghan journalist who works for The New York Times in Kabul.

KABUL – People here are not really optimistic about the current changes in Libya. Afghanistan has a bitter experience of collapsed regimes from the fall of King Zahir Khan until now. It goes on and on.

We have witnessed the fall of different regimes here in Afghanistan, but every one of them had worse consequences than the one before, and many people fled or were killed, wounded or displaced. The same thing will happen in Libya, and the people of Libya should be ready.

The fight of the rebels to take control of Libya is similar to what happened in Afghanistan when the Taliban were thrown out by the international community. And it is similar to when the mujahideen overthrew President Najibullah’s government 20 years ago, only to start looting public assets and then flee to other countries.

The changes in Libya have paved the way for new adversities for the country because after the collapse of Qaddafi’s regime, people will take revenge and have it taken upon them.

Many Afghan analysts on television and radio say they believe that the current situation will take Libya toward instability and civil war.

Gen. Abdul Wahid Taqat, a military analyst, said that just as Western countries invaded Iraq and set it 200 years back, now it is the turn of Libya. “I am not happy with the current changes in this government, because now it will go into crisis, and the West will not help them, as they did not help Afghanistan after the Russians were expelled.”

Wahid Muzda, a political analyst, said that it was a good development that people take power, but asked why the West did not intervene in Syria, Bahrain and Yemen.

“The West sees that its interest in Libya is its oil, and that’s why it interfered in this country,” he said.

“Hopefully this will bring a positive change to this country because during the protest the people of Libya were saying ‘Allahu Akbar’, so this is a good step for the Muslim world. But I am also concerned about the small armed groups who now have weapons, and also about war starting between the Libyan tribes over who will take control.”

Some believe that Qaddafi, who is a strong opponent of the West, will show up again as a militant leader in Libya.

When the Taliban were thrown out of government by the international community, some Afghans thought that was the end of them. But as we saw, they resurfaced and started their resistance with the help of neighboring countries. It may be the same thing with the Qaddafi regime. If he has hidden himself somewhere in Libya he may show up again with targeted killings and assassinations.

This is extremely dangerous for Libya because now even students, doctors, laborers, almost everyone has weapons and will establish their own gangs, just as we have warlords and criminals. It will be difficult for the new Libyan government to control these groups, to collect weapons and impose the rule of law.

Instead of killings and fighting, the solution is peace and negotiations. Just as the international community announced after 10 years that the problem of Afghanistan cannot be solved with fighting and that they would prefer to negotiate with the Taliban, so negotiations with the Qaddafi regime will be very useful to remove him from the scene and bring him to justice peacefully. If there are no negotiations then he will again be another terrorist leader and will pose another threat to the world.

But if the West and its allies in Libya keep pushing Qaddafi to surrender then Qaddafi will seek cover in a third country, as Osama bin Laden did, and plan attacks on other Western countries.

The question comes at a crucial time for the country. Eight years after the United States invaded and tried to install a democratic government, Iraqis are still struggling with a steady stream of violence while trying to establish their own identity.

Iraqis, not surprisingly, have a wide range of emotions about the issue and many say there is no good choice, reflecting their frustration with both the Iraqi and American governments.

Some fear that the radical cleric Moktada al-Sadr will follow through on his promises to rearm his militia if any American forces remain. Others believe that if the United States forces leave, the country will fall back into a sectarian war or become overrun by its neighboring countries — particularly Iran.Read more…

BAGHDAD – Ayad Allawi’s opponents pulled few punches in the close-run election campaign that he won, calling him a new Saddam, a Baathist, a friend of terrorists, even questioning his parentage — claiming he could not become prime minister because his mother was not born an Iraqi. Interestingly, one thing they did not often accuse him of was living abroad and only visiting Iraq when it was convenient — like when he ran for prime minister.

There’s a good reason for that: Most of his opponents didn’t dare mention that because it would only end in holding a mirror up to their own residency issues. Iraq may well be the only country in the world where a substantial part of its government commutes to work — from other countries. If you spend a few hours at Baghdad International Airport departure terminal, you could run into half of the Iraqi politicians there. As the planes starts to leave to various destinations, you can see where the politicians are heading.

The Tehran flight, for example, will have a number of Shiite politicians, like Ali al-Adeeb, a leading figure in the Dawa Party. The Dubai flight will have politicians like the elder statesman Adnan al-Pachachi. The Beirut flight will have Izzat Ashabender, the member of parliament, who split from Mr. Allawi and joined Mr. Maliki in the last elections. The Iraqi minister of interior, Jawad al-Bolani, could be sitting on the same flight you are taking to Amman, Jordan, where he has his family, except he will be in first class. Read more…

In most parts of the world, the end of the year is a time to reminisce about the best of the past and look to the future with a hopeful eye. Iraq is not like the rest of the world. For me, it is a time to update my death list. The latest entry is my ex-girlfriend.

When I received messages on my cellphone from friends saying, “Please accept my condolences,” I asked one of them, “What happened?” Another message came that explained that my ex-girlfriend was killed in the Dec. 8 bombings in Baghdad.

Since the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, I had kept a list of every relative or friend killed in violence. As of late 2006, I counted 124 deaths. Suddenly I stopped. No. 125 was my father.

Michael Kamber for The New York TimesRanya, right, was a would-be suicide bomber. She was 15 when she was caught on her way to a bombing, her vest already strapped on. Both Ranya and her mother, left, are in jail. The mother was believed to be connected to those involved in trying to organize Ranya’s death.

BAQUBA, Iraq — As a translator for The New York Times, I have met a lot of different characters and been in many new situations, such as meeting politicians, election candidates, students, mentally ill people, disabled people, injured people, bereaved mothers.

All of those situations were new and strange and often painful for me emotionally. But, as an Iraqi who has become accustomed to living amid violence, I have learned how to manage my emotions and to be calm and clear-headed to make things easier to handle for myself and for others.

Still, never did I expect to sit in a police detective’s chair on a reporting trip for The New York Times, questioning women who had tried to wear explosive belts and blow themselves up among civilians, police and American forces, and who were very well-trained in how to mislead the police. (See Alissa J. Rubin’s story in the Magazine, How Baida Wanted to Die.)

Earlier this year the NYT’s Iraqi reporter in Diyala visited one of Al Qaeda’s former strongholds in the province, after years in which it was too dangerous to go there. He recalls the scene.

DIYALA, Iraq–Nobody could describe the state of destruction in the village of death. Destruction was all around, impressions of the tragedy are found wherever you look around. Dozens of innocent victims had stepped over this ground toward their final fate, to be buried in mass graves.

In Diyala province, Albo Tu’mma village east of Baquba is one of those villages that fell to Al Qaeda in 2006. It proved to be one of Al Qaeda’s most important bastions and was where the movement established its great prison: East Baquba.

Dozens of people who were abducted from the main road which links Baquba and Mansuriya were held in that jail, after Al Qaeda broadened its area of control to dominate another 15 villages, 11 of which were totally destroyed.

DIYALA PROVINCE–I used to live in a small agricultural village in southwest Diyala province. It is an area famous for growing grapes, and includes hundreds of acres of large orchards that grow all kinds of fruits and vegetables.

In 2005, Sunni jihadi groups, including Abu Musab al Zarqawi’s Jama’at al-Tawhid wa’al-Jihad (Unity and Holy War) and Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, moved into the village and began their activities against the Americans. Villagers whispered discreetly about the presence of jihadi training camps for adults and children alike in groups the insurgents called “Birds of Heaven” or “Children of Heaven.”

In 2006 and 2007 the jihadis became the ruling power in my village, and others nearby. I left in 2007 because of the rising wave of violence against civilians, but maintained my connections with the villagers through my tribal relations, as is customary.

In March 2007, I went back, accompanying Iraqi and American forces when they found videotapes about training young children. In 2009, I went back to one of those villages 17 kilometers south west of Baquba, to gather information about those organizations. I hoped to interview one of the remaining children in that group.

My feet were looking for space, the airport was so crowded, and from time to time a security guard jumped in front of me from nowhere. The only idea that struck me was to be careful of making any sudden moves — I am an Arab with a wife who is wearing a scarf and who has come from Iraq. I was going to attract some attention.

But in fact nobody was looking at me at all. It was just that my sick, paranoid history was haunting me all the time.Read more…

Address: 32154 somewhere humble,
A simple city overcrowded with Iraqi Chaldean Christians,
The great state of Michigan,
An invention I had never heard of called a zip code,
U.S.A.

Dear friends and acquaintances and all those who have begun the journey to these United States,

Like my address, I am anonymous in this vast land of strange and lazy concepts, such as drive-through banks. Few are the people who know me and care about my safety, mainly because this is a safe environment, in spite of the serial rapist in Detroit or the drive-by shooting in Southfield or the grandma who killed her baby grandchild because voices told her to do so. It is a relatively safe environment.

Sahar S. Gabriel is the latest NYT translator to emigrate from Iraq to the U.S. on a refugee program. See also posts by Mudhafer al-Husaini.

This you will have to get accustomed to. And if it did not hit you soon, like me, don’t pride yourself on being strong. One day, after three months of being called an ice queen, you will find yourself weeping yourself to sleep for your mom’s cooking. But to stop would be unfair to yourself, and to this incredible land you have set foot in.

This place, as I’m now learning, has its own greatness and magic. But it also has a not-so-great side to it.

The first thing I noticed, and I’m sure you will, too, is customer service — an entirely alien concept. I’ll explain. While trying to purchase anything here you will notice that there is more than one provider for that item, and that they are pining for your attention. Well, it may be more accurate to say they are pining for your money. And so customer service was invented. You will find it very strange indeed in the beginning. Though most Arabs are raised to believe in greeting people, even strangers, we hardly smile at them for no known reason. If you’re a female smiling to a male then you are most likely thought to be flirting with him and vice versa. So we carried our frowns (our constant companions) with us to college and work and on the streets. But here if you’re making the same face you used in Bab al-Sharji, you probably will end up with a few sneers and a “lighten up, will ya?”

You will find, too, that growing up in Iraq, where everything was refurbished and repurposed, has taught you nothing about recycling. Apparently, we are hurting the planet with our ignorance. As someone babbles on about the reduce-reuse-recycle mantra, my mind drifts to memories of Mom grinding bread crumbs from the dry bread that we hadn’t eaten or to dad putting on the new power-saving light bulbs that he bought so that we could turn them on with the little generator powering our house. We may not know about going green, but unconsciously we are saving the planet — more than a lot of other people are.

The weather, the economy and the people here will get on your nerves at times. When this happens, I want you to remember how you got stuck for two hours in a traffic chaos two miles away from your house in Iraq. I want you to remember exactly what you felt. Because most probably you will have felt something like this: I’m so angry right now, but I guess it won’t help if I punch my idiot taxi driver in the face for not waiting his turn. This is all you need. This spirit.

The truth is we have been blessed with a bunch of accumulating characteristics from our life back in Iraq. Patience, or at least a larger sense of endurance, is one characteristic. Hard work and survival are other ones.

I’m only a child myself, opening up to this big world as much as I can before I go to sleep each day. But I know someone who gave me very good advice one day, and I will share it with you.

“Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers.

Live the questions. Perhaps someday, far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”

Mudhafer was a regular contributor to Baghdad Bureau, as was his Iraqi colleague Sahar S. Gabriel, now also in the United States on the same refugee program for former employees of American organizations.

Baghdadis React to U.S. Withdrawal

BAGHDAD–Iraqi politicians, military commanders and even insurgent leaders have all expressed their opinions about the timetable for the American military drawdown in Iraq, in keeping with the security agreement which came into force at the start of the year. Here some ordinary Iraqis have their say on the streets of central Baghdad. For a look at the shifting American military footprint in Baghdad and the rest of Iraq from 2007 to 2009 – before and after the surge and Awakening – see this interactive graphic.

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At War is a reported blog from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and other conflicts in the post-9/11 era. The New York Times's award-winning team provides insight — and answers questions — about combatants on the faultlines, and civilians caught in the middle.

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